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I looked at Rio, but he shook his head. He hadn’t said anything, but it wasn’t like the whole fucking place wasn’t going to be full of rumours by recess. I wasn’t going to tell them everything. Telling them much about it was going to… I didn’t know. Ruin it? I wasn’t the kind of guy to get attached, and I wasn’t attached to her…really. I could give her up whenever I wanted to. I just didn’t want to.
But there was going to be no explaining to anyone what Piper and I had or were doing or whatever without them starting to ask serious questions about what had happened to me. I didn’t care what they thought, but Steve and Jake’s teasing would get real old and lead to someone’s hospitalisation real quick.
“We hang out,” I answered.
There was silence.
I looked up at them. “What?” I dared them.
Steve and Jake looked between each other, then at Rio, then at me.
“What?” I asked again, my voice hard. “Barlow and I hang out.”
“Like…us hang out?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, if he fucked us,” Steve snorted.
Rio kicked him. “Leave it alone.”
“You want us to believe he hasn’t fucked her?” Jake said.
“What he did or didn’t do is none of our fucking business. If it was, he’d have told us,” Rio snarled.
I knew that was a dig. Pretty much everything Rio knew about me and Piper, he’d guessed. He knew me that fucking well. But then he’d always known about my thing for perfect Little Miss Popular.
Steve and Jake thankfully gave it up, but it was only by heavy protest. Which meant I didn’t go to class. It didn’t mean I wasn’t near classrooms at certain times of the day. Not my classrooms, mind. So, I saw Piper heading into the library and felt the very immature and maybe just a little creepy urge to follow her.
There were very few people in the library that lesson, so there weren’t really that many people to see me pull Piper behind a stack and kiss her. She kissed me back instantly. Her hands went to my chest and started sliding up my body. Then they were sliding down again, and she pushed me away. I was gratified that it felt reluctant.
“What are you doing?” she asked, smiling up at me.
“I’m kissing you. Or did you get hit on the head today?” Which was not at all an excuse to run my hand over her hair.
She smacked me playfully. “This is weird behaviour for you, Lombardi.”
It was fucking weird, but I wasn’t questioning it.
“I missed your touch. So, sue me,” was what I told her.
“Anyone would think you’d gone soft for me.”
The teasing in her voice got to me as much as the fact it was disgustingly true. Turmoil raged in me. I was used to feeling like a piece of shit. I wasn’t used to feeling like I didn’t want to be a piece of shit. I knew I’d never change, but she’d come along and made me less accepting of that. She made me forget that we couldn’t have more.
She hadn’t so much changed me as changed the way I saw myself. It wasn’t a comfort.
“I was joking. Relax,” she said, patting my chest.
I stepped away from her. “You want a ride home?”
I felt her question, but she didn’t ask it. “Well, I’d super appreciate it. But I get if you’ve got other things to do.”
I could always find other things to do, but none would be my preference.
“I don’t have other things to do.”
“Lombardi?”
“Barlow?”
